Octagenarian Dino De Laurentiis will be presented with the Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award while Ernest Lehman and Jack Cardiff will receive honorary Oscars at this year's Academy Awards ceremony on March 25.

De Laurentiis, whose films range from La Strada and Nights Of Cabiria in Italy to Serpico, Death Wish, Blue Velvet and the upcoming Hannibal, gets the Thalberg, an award given to "creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production."

Lehman, a writer/producer/director with writing credits including Sabrina, North By Northwest, West Side Story and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf' and producing credits including Virginia Woolf and Hello Dolly, is receiving an honorary award "in appreciation of a body of varied and enduring work."

Cinematographer Jack Cardiff is being honoured as "a master of light and colour, a tireless experimenter who made Technicolor as subtle, as eloquent as a brush in the hand of one of the old masters." His credits include Black Narcissus (for which he won an Oscar in 1947), War And Peace (1956), Fanny, The African Queen, The Barefoot Contessa and The Prince And The Showgirl. He was also nominated for directing Sons And Lovers in 1960.